


Like a Night in a Forest

by lirin



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Crossover, Forests, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:48:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26016796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/pseuds/lirin
Summary: Wanda falls into a strange pine forest, and meets someone with abilities much like her brother's.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 41
Collections: Crossworks 2020





	Like a Night in a Forest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VampirePaladin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampirePaladin/gifts).



Carrying a sandwich in one hand and a glass of milk in the other, Wanda pushed her bedroom door shut behind her. It had been a long day of Avengers training, and she felt like taking some time to herself. She set her dinner down on the desk, crossed the room to retrieve the TV remote from her bedside table, turned to walk back—

And found herself falling through the air. The room seemed to have vanished, and nothing but empty sky (or was it empty space?) surrounded her. And still she was falling, much longer than ought to have been possible even if she'd started out in a skyscraper, much less the third story her room was in.

She gathered her magic around her, hoping it would be enough to cushion her in a fall from this height—or depth, or whatever direction she was falling in. But before she even realized her fall was over, all at once she was sliding through the branches of a pine tree, and landing on soft damp earth with a thud that was surprisingly light considering gravity and the effect it ought to have on human acceleration (and deceleration). All around her was darkness. 

For a moment, she wondered if she'd hit her head in the fall, but she felt fine. It seemed more likely that it was simply nighttime.

When she'd walked into her room, it had been a little after six and still fully light out. Wherever she was now, it definitely wasn't anywhere around where she'd been.

There was a rushing sound from a nearby tree and then a thump similar to her own. Someone else in the same predicament as her—or the person who had brought her here? Wanda readied her magic at her fingertips, and headed towards the source of the sound, as best as she could place it in the darkness. Her eyes were beginning to adjust, but it was still hard to make out more than general shapes.

"Oh hey," someone said from behind her, before she'd made it more than a couple of steps. "Did you do this?" A flashlight snapped on, aimed at her from back the way she'd come.

Wanda spun around. She couldn't see anything beyond the bright beam of light. "Of course not," she said brusquely. "Did you? And would you mind not shining that directly in my eyes?"

"Sorry." The light shifted all at once, so that it was shining out from one of the nearby pines, presumably wedged in the crook of the lowest branches. But the young man who had spoken to her didn't seem to have moved. Much easier to see now, he was fidgeting with a pair of goggles that held back his silver hair. "Look, I don't even know where we are. If I'd brought us here, I would have made sure to bring us somewhere that I knew what it was."

"I know what it is," Wanda said dryly. "We're in a forest." She pulled her magic inside her as far as she could, so that only the smallest sparks danced inside her clenched fists where he would be hard pressed to spot them. If he didn't already know who she was and what she could do, she saw no need to inform him.

"Yeah, but—" He blurred in appearance briefly, then snapped back. Or had he not been there at all, for a moment? "The forest extends pretty far in every direction," he said. "And I'm not seeing any familiar landmarks."

"You—do you have special abilities?" Wanda blurted. _Like Pietro_ , she didn't say. This person didn't look anything like her brother, but that blur of motion was so familiar it made her heart ache.

"Is that gonna be a problem?"

She shook her head, and realized tears were stinging her cheeks. She'd always assumed that Pietro was unique. They both were. Each other's other half, the only person in the world who understood... But that didn't matter now. "My brother...could move very fast sometimes."

"Cool! Are you a mutant too? Are you sure you didn't use your powers to bring us here?" He blurred once more and reappeared. "You don't have any ID on you."

"Because I was in my bedroom eating a sandwich," Wanda said. "The only thing I had on me was the TV remote and I seem to have lost that when I was bouncing off of a tree. My name's Wanda."

"I'm Peter," he said, giving her a desultory wave. "I was playing arcade games in my Mom's basement and eating potato chips. Too bad neither of us managed to hold on to our food. We might need it later. So are you a mutant?"

"As in, someone who gained abilities through random mutation?" Wanda frowned. "I've never heard of that happening. I do have abilities. My brother and I, we volunteered for an experiment with a scepter that possessed extraordinary capabilities. Much later, we learned that it contained one of the Infinity Stones. Everybody else they experimented on died, but the two of us were left with enhanced abilities."

"I don't know anything about Infinity Stones," Peter said. "And personally I don't think I would want to let anybody experiment on me. But that's still cool. So your brother was fast. What can you do?"

Wanda hesitated. He probably wasn't directly responsible for her being brought here—some sort of portal would be necessary for that, not just super-speed—but perhaps he was working with someone. On the other hand, if he was, then he already knew everything about her. So it couldn't particularly hurt. She opened her hand, letting scarlet tendrils of magic spill off of it towards a nearby tree. She wrapped the magic around one of the branches, and then centered her thoughts and tugged.

There was a loud _snap_ , and the branch tumbled to the ground at her feet.

"Okay, so, like, telekinesis?" Peter asked.

"And other sorts of energy manipulation. Magic, if you want to call it that." She didn't mention telepathy; she preferred not to use that as much these days, and he'd probably be happier if he didn't know. (So would she.)

"Cool," Peter said again. "Okay, so, like, if we've both got powers, then why don't we use them to work together to get out of here?" He blurred into nothing and then reappeared a couple of times.

If he'd been Pietro, Wanda would have known right where he was and what he was doing the whole time. But with this stranger, there was none of the connection she and her twin had had, and she felt no wish to open herself up in that way to someone unknown. And so she waited quietly for him to finish whatever he was doing and come back.

While she waited, she sent her magic to search through the nearby trees until she finally found the TV remote, nestled in one of the pines next to where she had fallen, only two branches up from the ground. She stuck it in her pocket. It would be easy enough to get a replacement when she got back, but to do that she'd have to explain what had happened. She wasn't sure yet if she'd want to talk about what had happened here. (She wasn't sure yet if she'd get back, either, but she didn't see a point in worrying about that right now.)

"So you've worked with someone with my powers before," Peter said as he reappeared once again. "Do you want to call the shots, then? There's this one girl at my school who's telekinetic but your powers don't look anything like hers. And besides I don't know anything about giving orders."

"I've never been much of one for giving orders, either," Wanda said. "We'll call the shots together."

"Okay, so what do you want to do first?"

"You've seen a lot more of this forest than I have. Do you have any idea where in the world we are?"

He shook his head. "Doesn't look like any forest I've ever been in. Of course, I grew up in D.C., so there's not a lot of forests there."

"I grew up in Sokovia," Wanda said. "It had plenty of forests. But I think I'd know if we were in Sokovia. I'd feel it in my bones, somehow. Besides, none of their forests there were this dense. You always had a chance of looking up and seeing the stars."

"Where's Sokovia?"

"Central Europe. It borders Slovakia and the Czech Republic."

"Are those part of Czechoslovakia?" he asked. "Anyway, I've never heard of Sokovia. Guess I should have paid more attention in history class."

"It was all over the news last year, when Ultron raised Novi Grad into the air and the Avengers had to evacuate the city," Wanda said with a sigh. "You could hardly have missed it."

"Nope, never heard of it," he said. "So, uh, just out of curiosity, what year is it?"

Wanda frowned. That was a complication she hadn't considered. But at least it explained why he was babbling about Czechoslovakia. "It's 2016," she said.

"1984 where I'm from," Peter said. "So the question is, in this forest, is it 1984, or 2016, or none of the above?"

"Now there's a concerning thought," Wanda said. "But not one we can really do much about right now, unless one of these pine trees has a newspaper stand built into it. So where are we? So far, I think we'd only managed to rule out Sokovia and Washington, D.C."

"Also California, 'cause they have palm trees, not pines."

"Well, southern California, at least," Wanda said. "I think other parts have more forests. They're supposed to be famous for their redwoods."

"These definitely aren't redwoods," Peter said. "Do you remember being above the trees as you fell, or were you just in the middle of them? Because it felt like one moment there was nothing, and then the next moment there were trees all around me. And I move fast enough that I'm not really used to things changing drastically around me from moment to moment."

"I have no idea," Wanda said.

"Oh well, I figured it couldn't hurt to ask. It was just weird."

"You know what else is weird?" Wanda picked up the branch she had broken off earlier. For good measure, she broke a twig off of it so that the break would be even more fresh. "Smell this."

He sniffed at it. "It doesn't smell like anything."

"Exactly. When have you ever smelled a fresh pine tree that doesn't smell like pine? Especially"—she snapped off another twig—"right after it's been broken?"

"Okay, you're right, that's definitely weird. But what are we going to do about it?"

"You've been moving around a lot," Wanda said. "Has it all been from side to side?"

"Well, yeah, I mean I've been going in all four directions, not that I know which direction is which..." He trailed off and looked over at her. "You mean up?"

"How good are you at climbing trees?"

"Very," he said. "Mostly 'cause I'm normally very good at not falling. Today was weird."

"So why don't you see if you can spot the lights of any cities from here? Or if you can see the moon, maybe we can figure out whether we're in your time or mine from which phase it's in."

"Maybe we're in neither," he said, and reappeared on the second branch of one of the trees, well above Wanda's head. She almost thought she'd seen him run directly up the tree trunk, though she wasn't sure quite how that would work. "You can keep the flashlight with you," he added. "I'll be right back."

It was his longest departure yet—Wanda stood there for nearly five minutes, fidgeting with the TV remote and two tissues that were the only things she had in her pockets. She thought that when she got home, she ought to get a utility belt like Peter had, and wear it at all times just in case she fell through another magical teleportation portal or whatever it was that had brought them here.

Peter was suddenly in front of her again, casting a long shadow on the forest floor as the flashlight still shone out above their heads. "You've got to see this," he said.

"I don't think—"

"No, really. If I try to explain it to you, you won't believe me. Here, come on. How good are you at climbing trees? I can carry you if you'd rather."

"I'd rather skip the climbing entirely," Wanda said. "How tall is it?"

"I dunno, a hundred fifty feet maybe? But you'll be completely safe, I won't let you fall—"

"I'll meet you at the top," Wanda said, and let her magic unfurl. He'd been casually showing off his powers enough that she really ought to take a turn at it, anyway.

She had to take things slower than she'd like to avoid a repeat (in the opposite direction) of her branch-bouncing arrival. The trees were close enough together that their branches interwove in places, but she dodged them as best as she could. Her first push of her magic against the ground left her far from the top of the tree, but she pushed off a second time, this time against one of the largest branches; and then a third time against another branch.

Peter still managed to be there waiting by the time she reached the top in a fiery swirl of magic, so perhaps she hadn't managed to show off that much after all. But then she looked up, and forgot all of that. " _Two_ moons?" she gasped.

"Yeah, also the stars are weird," Peter said, sitting down on one of the highest branches that was still big enough to support his weight, and leaning back against the tree trunk. Between the stars and the moons, there was a lot more light up here than on the forest floor, and she could almost make out his expression even though they'd left the flashlight below. "I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." He turned to look at her, and the treetop quivered with the movement. "You, uh, do know what that's from?"

"Yes, we do have movies from the 1930s in 2016 as well as in 1984," Wanda said.

"So...yeah," he said. "Where do you think we are?"

"Another planet, I suppose."

"Or maybe even another dimension!" He swung his legs, making the top of the tree bounce more than Wanda liked. She wrapped her magic around the branch she was balancing on, to hold it steady.

"That would at least explain how easily we ended up here," Wanda said with a sigh. "But I'd really rather that's not the case."

"It's hard to tell much when it's so dark everywhere."

"Maybe we ought to wait until the sun rises, then." She looked over at him; it was still too dark to make eye contact, but the double moonlight glinted off of his hair and made it shine. "I know it's probably hard to stay still for that long, but we don't know where we are or what's around us or anything."

"We also don't know if the sun is going to rise," Peter said. "Or whether there will be two of those, too, like in Star Wars. That's a movie that came out in the '70s, which I know is practically ancient history for you."

"I've heard of Star Wars," Wanda said dryly. "So are we going to wait or not?"

The branches of the tree shook again as he fidgeted. "Might as well. We can pile up some pine branches on the ground to sleep on. Do you want to trade off keeping a lookout?"

Wanda shrugged. "If you want to."

"Not really. I haven't seen anybody but ourselves around, and whoever brought us here is obviously more powerful than us so it's not like we're going to scare them off." He stood up on the branch, then swung around to hang from it by his hands, in one swift move that would have sent anyone else plummeting to the forest floor. "Race you to the bottom of the tree," he added.

"Only if you don't cheat," Wanda said, and threw herself out of the tree, summoning her magic to soften her fall only in the last few feet.

(Peter still won. Opinions differed on whether it was cheating.)

Wanda's internal clock thought it was barely past seven, and Peter said it was around noon where he came from, but they were both tired enough from their strange experiences that it didn't take long for them to get to sleep. Peter turned off the flashlight to save the batteries and piled a few of the strangely odorless pine branches up for a bit of cushioning, and if he did anything else, Wanda wasn't aware of it because she had already fallen asleep.

She wasn't sure how long she slept, but it was definitely long enough that it ought to have been light out if this place was anything like Earth.

It wasn't.

"Hey, so, I had more of a look around when I woke up," said Peter. He hadn't turned the flashlight back on yet, but there was still just enough moonlight filtering through the trees for her to see his outline, and the silver of his hair. "This forest goes on for as far as I can see. No animals, no people. But there was one thing weird."

"Just one? As opposed to everything?" Wanda rubbed her eyes and fervently regretted that she hadn't been holding her sandwich instead of the TV remote when she'd fallen.

"Well, yeah, but this was extra weird. There's this, like, enormous metal cube in the middle of a small clearing a couple miles from here. Well, not _enormous_ enormous. Maybe twenty feet high?"

"And that's the only thing out of the ordinary you've found in the forest?"

"I'm afraid so. There weren't even any other clearings."

"Well, then." Wanda stood up. "We might as well take a look."

The metal box was, indeed, very large. It seemed to be roughly cube-shaped, and made from some silver-colored metal that wasn't particularly shiny; it cast a double shadow from the moons shining down on the clearing, but it didn't reflect the moonlight at all. It did at least reflect a bit of light when they shined the flashlight directly at it. Wanda stared up at it for a few minutes, then pushed off from the ground to fly around it and stare some more.

Peter had climbed up on top of it somehow. Wanda was pretty sure he couldn't fly, but whatever he was doing seemed equally effective for getting himself places he needed to be.

"What do you think it is?" Wanda asked, easing herself to a gentle landing on the top of the box.

"I have absolutely no idea," Peter said. "But here's the question." He knelt down and knocked a couple times on the metal beneath their feet. It didn't make a very loud noise, but the sound was open enough that Wanda suspected the box was hollow on the inside. "So we haven't found a way out yet, right? And this is the only out-of-the-ordinary thing we've found in this whole weird forest that stretches on as far as I can tell?"

Wanda grinned. "What if getting out means going in, not out?"

"Yeah, exactly. It's worth a shot, right?"

"It certainly seems like our best option. So what's the plan?"

"You're the one with the magic," Peter said. "Even if you didn't want to call the shots before, I think you deserve to call the shots in this situation."

"I could use my magic to rip it apart, but since we don't know what it is, that might very well destroy whatever we want to save along with the rest of it."

"There's something on one side that could possibly be a door," Peter said, and disappeared as he was wont to do. "Down here!" he called from the ground a second later. "Take a look!"

Wanda flew down next to him. "If it is a door, it's not much of one," she said. Even when Peter shined the flashlight directly at it, the rectangle could only be differentiated from the rest of the box by being even less reflective than the rest of it—and by a line on one side that might, potentially, be a hinge.

"But it's something," he said. "Do you think you might be able to use your powers to pull the door open?"

"I can try." Wanda pushed scarlet tendrils out to skirt around the rectangle on every side. She didn't doubt that there was something there, now that she and Peter had looked at it more closely; but whatever it was was too similar to everything around it, and she couldn't get a grip on it. "There's nothing to grab onto," she said. "If it is a door, it's sealed too well. Do we have any way to make a dent in it? If I could get a corner free, I could pull on that."

"Well, we could try to use the flashlight batteries to make a bomb...except I don't have any idea how to do that."

Wanda pulled the TV remote from her pocket. "This might be even better," she said. "It uses lithium-ion batteries, which have a reputation for catching fire."

"Why would people use batteries that have a reputation for catching fire?"

"Because they do a lot of other things well, and besides, they don't catch fire very often. But I think a bit of magic might convince them to." Usually, when she used her magic around a fire or explosion, she was trying to limit its power or curtail it altogether. This was something new, and she wasn't sure if she liked it—but she was pretty sure it was her best option.

"Great!" Peter rubbed his hands together. "Do you want me to help, or just stay out of the way?"

"Can you move other people along with you?"

"As long as I'm careful."

"You can react to things very quickly, right? Would you be able to tell when it's about to explode?"

"I think so. I've done it before."

"Okay," Wanda said. "Then I think I can risk standing closer to the box. Once the explosion starts, pick me up and get me out of range." 

She pried open the back of the remote and shook the flat rectangular battery into the palm of her hand. She let her magic flow around it, pushing at the battery from every side. Once she was sure she knew every feature of the little piece of plastic and metal and energy, she let it rise into the air and started wrapping her magic tighter and tighter around it, while pushing it firmly against the mysterious box. She chose to align it with one of the corners of the potential door, hoping that would have the best chance of jarring something loose without damaging anything vital. She pressed in on the battery from all sides until it seemed that surely it should have already caved to the pressure—

And all of a sudden she was in the midst of the trees, stomach roiling, as fire blossomed in the distance. She fell to her knees and rubbed a hand across her face, fighting the disorientation. Peter leaned down in front of her. "Are you okay?" he asked. "That always hits people kind of hard, especially the first time."

"No, it's okay," Wanda said. "I think maybe you're faster than my brother. I never felt so dizzy when he carried me."

"Maybe you were more attuned to each other," Peter said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "I mean, being siblings and all."

"Perhaps. Did it work?"

Peter blurred away for a second (maybe less). "There's a dent in the box right where the center of the blast was, but the door didn't open or anything."

"Maybe there's something I can get a grip on now," Wanda said, and pushed herself to her feet. "Let's take a look."

The forest was dark again now that the explosion had died down, but Peter still had the flashlight. He shined it all around the box as Wanda watched, hands on her hips. Most of the box looked just as it had before, but the top corner of the possible door was buckled outwards. Wanda wrapped red strands of magic around it and pulled.

The door was strong, but she was stronger.

It buckled slowly at first, glowing red as it reflected the light of the magic all around it. Then all at once it swung open, and the pale line at the one side turned out to be a hinge after all.

"So much for that theory," Peter said.

Wanda peeked through the door, and sighed. Whatever they'd found, it didn't look like a way out of here.

"On the bright side, if we _are_ able to get out of here eventually, this stuff looks like it's worth a lot of money," Peter said.

The contents of the box were golden and glittering. The piles of objects—some round, some angular—almost seemed to glow with their own light when Peter stopped shining the flashlight on them. Wanda wasn't sure exactly what they _were_ , but they were definitely beautiful.

And really, really useless.

She wandered around the inside of the box for a minute, hoping to spot if there was anything that stood out from the piles of glowing golden treasure, but it all seemed very homogeneous. Eventually, she rejoined Peter, who was leaning against one of the trees at the edge of the clearing, and they both stared at the open door.

"Well, we're now down one potential bomb with nothing to show for it," Peter said. "I mean, we've still got the flashlight, so maybe you could use the batteries from that for something else if we needed to. But then we wouldn't have very much light."

"I don't understand this forest," Wanda said. "Why would this box be the only thing to be found anywhere around here? And what are we even doing here?"

"Um..."

"Maybe you just didn't go far enough," Wanda said, then realized Peter wasn't next to her anymore. He was standing by the box, looking in the door. "Did you think of something?"

"Wasn't the box, like, half full a minute ago?"

"Why, has it changed?" Wanda hurried across the clearing, holding her magic ready at her fingertips.

"There's a lot less of the glowy stuff in it now," he said. "Look."

Wanda stood next to him in the doorway and watched the contents of the box. She didn't feel like getting any closer until she knew what was happening. It was hard to tell exactly what was happening—whether things were disappearing, or shrinking, or something else entirely—but the box was definitely slowly becoming more and more empty.

Eventually, there was none at all. And still Peter and Wanda stood in the doorway, unsure what to do next. "Do you think maybe _now_ the idea of going in to get out might work?" Peter suggested after a few moments.

"It's worth a try," Wanda said. She stepped inside the box, but nothing changed. She thought perhaps the air inside it felt slightly different, but it could easily be her imagination. She walked a slow circle of the box, her footfalls echoing in the empty space.

When she stepped out of the box, the forest looked strangely different. "Were those trees that color a minute ago?" she asked Peter.

He tipped his head back and looked around, shining the flashlight at the various treetops. "Whatever it's doing, it's changing slowly enough that I don't see a difference from moment to moment," he said. "But I think you're right. They were a lot darker a bit ago."

"They're not changing color, they're fading," Wanda said. "Do you think they're going to disappear like everything in the box did?"

She realized Peter was holding her hand. "We may not have known each other long, Wanda-from-the-twenty-first-century, but you're the most familiar thing in this entire forest. If we're about to lose the forest, I don't want to lose you too."

She squeezed his hand. "I'm glad you're here," she said. "It would be a lot harder if I was alone."

"If I was alone, I don't think I would have been able to get that box open," Peter said. "I don't know what getting it open did, but it obviously did something."

"If I was alone, I don't think I would have even found the box," Wanda said. "I don't think I would have dared to wander that far from where I started out."

The forest grew lighter and lighter until it wasn't there at all, but they didn't find themselves falling again. They seemed to be in some sort of enormous field, or perhaps it was just a one-dimensional plane that they were standing on top of, as it seemed perfectly flat. It was finally light enough to see without the flashlight, though Wanda wasn't sure where the light was coming from. Peter switched the flashlight off and stowed it away somewhere on his utility belt without releasing his firm grip on Wanda's hand. "Where do you think we are?" he asked after a bit.

"You are on Gamma 83, in the Twenty-Ninth Dimension," a voice said.

Where nothing had surrounded them, all of a sudden strange beings appeared on every side. Wanda couldn't exactly tell what they looked like. In fact, it was hard to get her eyes to focus on them at all; every time she tried, she found her gaze drifting away.

"They're like when the trees first showed up," Peter said. "One moment nothing, the next moment they come out of nowhere. And I'm pretty sure I mean literally nowhere."

"That's because you do not reside in the Twenty-Ninth Dimension," said one of the beings—Wanda couldn't be sure which one.

"Never mind that," Wanda said, clutching Peter's hand tight. "Why did you bring us here?"

"And what's up with the box of glowy stuff?" Peter added.

"Our home dimension has a variety of safeguards for the protection of valuables," one of the beings said. It may have been the same one, or it may not have been. "But we realized that all of the aforementioned safeguards were attuned to our own dimension."

"So that box was a bank vault?" Peter asked. "You brought us here to rob your bank for you?" Wanda thought he looked a bit too excited about the entire concept.

"That would be rather an unrefined way of phrasing it."

"I've been manipulated by others for their own ends before," Wanda snapped. "I don't appreciate it."

"Why couldn't you do it yourselves?" Peter asked.

"Once a being has entered the Twenty-Ninth Dimension, their _éa_ is forever linked to the _éamia_ of the dimension, and cannot but be..." The beings rambled on for quite some time in answer to Peter's question, and yet Wanda didn't feel much better informed by the time they'd finished.

"So why us?" Wanda asked.

The answer to this was also full of technical details and concepts that couldn't be translated into English (or perhaps the beings just couldn't be bothered to). As best as Wanda could tell, the interdimensional bank robbers had decided that they needed more than one person, and they wanted people with special powers beyond those of mere humans, and pulling more than one person through the _illifritian_ generator (whatever that was) was hard enough, "...and so we seized upon a dizygotic collection of powered individuals," the being concluded calmly. "We thank you for your assistance, and will remunerate you fairly."

"Dizygotic," Wanda repeated numbly. She and Pietro had been dizygotic—fraternal—twins. But Pietro had died long before these beings had come looking for her, and so their generator must have seized onto the nearest superpowered person it could find who remotely resembled Pietro.

Peter was nice and all, but she would much rather have had Pietro.

"So do we get to go home now?" Peter asked brightly.

"Certainly," one of the beings said. "There is an _illifritii_ portal that will return you to the exact place you were taken. It's over there." Wanda expected them to point, or at least indicate a location somehow, but they didn't seem to move at all.

"Where?" Peter asked.

"There." The beings still made no move.

"Ah, _irifrizii_ , you remember humans can see only a narrow portion of the electromagnetic spectrum!" someone said. It was probably one of the other beings, but since Wanda still couldn't get her eyes to exactly focus on them, it was hard for her to tell anything for certain.

"Perhaps this will be easier," one of them said. All at once, they disappeared and Peter and Wanda were surrounded by forest. This time, there was sunlight filtering through the trees. "Head north—you're currently facing southwest—for two _prilak_."

"That's one and a quarter of your miles," another voice added.

"The _illifritii_ portal will be there, in between two trees. It draws all light into itself, so you will know you have found it when you see a circle that is darker than its surroundings."

"Okay," Peter said. He was still holding Wanda's hand. "Um, bye?"

"Farewell," one or some or all of the beings said. There was a rushing sound, almost like a waterfall, and then silence descended.

"Huh," Peter said. "So that was weird."

"Yes, it was," Wanda said. "I wish they hadn't brought us here."

"Well, at least it won't be for much longer," Peter said. "Come on, this way." He tugged at her hand, but didn't move any faster than Wanda could. "We'll go together."

Wanda nodded. She was still thinking of Pietro. If these strange beings had sought her out a few years sooner, would it have been her and him exploring these woods and accidentally robbing an interdimensional bank?

"So it was nice to meet you," Peter said as they walked. "I wish we could have gotten to know each other better. I mean, we don't even know each other's names."

"Yes, we do. You're Peter, and I'm Wanda."

"I mean full names." He stopped walking and turned to face her, holding out a hand for a handshake. "Hi, it's nice to meet you. My name's Peter Maximoff. What's yours?"

"Maximoff?" Wanda bit her lip. It was a strange coincidence. What were the odds that such a rare name would be shared by two strangers...or was it even a coincidence? After a minute, she realized Peter was still standing there with his hand outstretched. "My name's Wanda Maximoff," she said. She touched his hand tentatively. "I had a twin brother named Pietro Maximoff, but he died."

"In my dimension," Peter said, "I have a kid sister, but I never had a twin. It would be pretty cool to have you for a twin. Your brother Pietro was lucky."

"The beings from the Twenty-Ninth Dimension spoke of dizygotes," Wanda said. She started walking again, and Peter followed. "Twins. Do you think we're the alternate dimension versions of each other's twin?"

"It seems as likely as anything else," Peter said. "Cool! This is like getting another sister. But I'm pretty sure I'm still the oldest, since you look around my age and the year where you came from is several decades older. Does that mean I get to tell you what to do?"

"Pietro was twelve minutes older than me, and I never let him boss me around," Wanda said. She was pretty sure Peter was trying to get her to smile, and she wasn't sure if she was quite ready for that. It still hurt to think of Pietro, gone almost two years now. And she wasn't sure how she felt about this new alternate-dimension twin, but she was about to lose him before she could even figure out how she felt.

"Don't worry, you can still call the shots if you want," Peter said. "You did a good job with the bank vault. I'm sorry the aliens tricked you into doing something you didn't want to. I've never broken into a bank vault before, but I broke into the Pentagon once. I didn't steal anything though."

Wanda almost smiled. "I'm glad I met you, Peter." It was nothing like having Pietro back; Peter was entirely his own person, though she thought his sense of humor reminded her a bit of her brother—as well as his ability, of course. "It's only been a day, or maybe more or less, who knows. But I feel like you've become a friend to me, even before I knew that we were related in an alternate dimension."

"I like you too, Wanda," Peter said. "But no offense, I don't really like this place—you're the only good thing in it, frankly—and I'd really like to go home."

"I do, too," Wanda said. She pointed at a shadow between the trees ahead of them. "And I think that's the portal, which really sounded like a black hole from their description but I don't think we could be standing this close to a black hole."

"It was nice meeting you," Peter said. "If we didn't come from different dimensions, I'd definitely hope to keep in touch."

"I know some people who know a lot about tech," Wanda said. "I'll tell them about the beings from the Twenty-Ninth Dimension and everything that happened, and maybe they'll be able to replicate the portal generator."

"Well if they do, come tell me," Peter said. He stepped forward and gave her a quick hug. "Goodbye, little sister."

"Goodbye, almost twin brother."

Side by side, they stepped into the dark portal. The ground disappeared beneath Wanda's feet as she stepped forward, until she was tumbling through nothingness. 

And then the nothingness vanished, and she was once again in her room in the Avengers compound, landing with a thump on the floor. Her sandwich and milk were still sitting on her desk, but as hungry as she was by now, she thought she'd better take the time to get something fresh from the kitchen, since she didn't know how much time had passed here in her own dimension. She hurried out the door and down the hall.

As she went, she reached into her pocket for the TV remote, not that it would do her much good with the battery gone—and not that she felt much like watching TV now. She was going to be too busy writing down everything that had happened, while she still remembered all the details.

The TV remote and the two tissues were no longer the only things in her pocket. Next to them was a strange globular gem, golden and glowing with an internal light. Well, the bank robbers had promised that she'd be fairly remunerated. She knew a lot of people who would have fun with something like this. She'd have to give it to them and find out what it was, and if it was as unearthly as it looked.

She didn't bother to make a sandwich this time, but just wrapped lunch meat around a stick of mozzarella and ate it there in the middle of the kitchen. She hoped Peter had gotten home all right. If she was okay here, that probably meant he was okay wherever he was too.

It was strange, caring about someone not from her Earth—not from even the same galaxy, if she understood how dimensions worked (which she still wasn't sure whether she did). She'd only known him for a day, and yet, in a way, he was her brother.

And if he was anything like Pietro, he'd probably been even hungrier than she was when he got home. Wanda hoped his refrigerator was half as well stocked as this one was, and went to pour herself a glass of milk. It was good to be home.


End file.
